


Unfortunate Technicalities: Electric Boogaloo

by TheOneKrafter



Series: Bleak Situations and How You Cope [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: AU, Dragon Age: Inquisition Inner Circle is Found Family, Elf rights, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mage Rights or Mage Fights, Modern Character in Thedas, Modern Girl in Thedas, Rewrite, Self-Insert, Time Travel, for real this time, in the place of my first ever DA self-insert, its actually me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26939815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOneKrafter/pseuds/TheOneKrafter
Summary: Their Inquisitor is dead, and then they wake up the day the Breach bursts into being.And now, in her place, is one very similar looking, slightly older, girl.(A love letter to anyone who read my first fic in the Fandom, Unfortunate Technicalities. The Author is now in Thedas, her self-insert is dead, and once again, absolutely no one is sure of themselves.)
Series: Bleak Situations and How You Cope [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965700
Comments: 65
Kudos: 259





	1. As The World Caves In (Well, shit.)

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not sure anyone will read this, but to every single person who read Unfortunate Technicalities the first time around, thank you. I love you. I hope you enjoy the angst.

In the unbearable grief of it all, Solas sees that she is older this time she awakens. 

Still small, barely taller than before, but older. Face less pale with new freckles he hadn’t noticed before, strange blue metal framed spectacles ( _her eyesight had been very good, last he checked, but void take him she_ **_had_ ** _—_ )

Darker hair. 

He closes his eyes, when Cassandra pulls him from Haven’s gates into a small cabin as the damage he wrought burns the world around him, and all he can see is blood pooling from his _Da’lath’in_ , from Zoe’s lips, watery green eyes like the Breach curling in some semblance of a reassuring smile behind his eyelids. 

“She is different,” Cassandra says gravely, and Solas knows her well enough to know her world has been torn asunder once more. 

Solas checks her vitals, unashamed to truly attempt to quell the mark’s tearing and pain. He is forced once more into his depleted, ungainly newly awakened body, unable to do true magic, but he can try. 

“She is older.”

Neither know what that means for the small girl they watched die a martyr in another life. 

Varric hisses curse after curse, eyes wide on her form and the Breach and the unlikelihood of it all. 

“She’s—!” Varric starts, hands clenching into fists once before forcefully relaxing. 

“Leliana, Josephine, and Cullen do not remember,” Cassandra says, eyes shut firmly, head tilted towards the sky as if she is about to give some strained prayer. 

“No one but us remember, Seeker,” Varric says harshly. “We don’t even know if _she—_!”

He doesn’t finish that thought. 

“And the others of the Circle?” Cassandra asks. “We must contact them.”

“Big fucking hole in the sky first, Seeker,” Varric says, rubbing a hand down his face. 

Solas says nothing, eyes on the pained face of the girl who called him Hahren and seemed so willing to love people who were not worthy of it. 

Grief. Grief burns through his bones to his throat and chest and leaves him nothing but ash. He had thought he had suffered enough of it, could not bear another shattering cataclysm before he finally shattered. 

He. He does not know if he is wrong yet. 

He knows nothing. 

Not of time or space or the dust his bones will be one day. Not of Heralds and false gods and little Inquisitors with too soft hands made to shed blood. 

In the very least, Zoe would be happy to know she broke his pride, more than any before her. 

Him, felled by a quickling child. 

How the dead must laugh at him now. 

—

When she awakes, she isn’t in chains. 

Some call for it in the village. She is still so unbearably young looking though, for whatever changes there are, so dissenters are easily silenced by the certainty in Cassandra at a teenager not being capable of such a tragedy. 

She blinks blearily, and suddenly Solas realizes her eyes are not the color of the Breach. A dark forest green that could be confused with grey in some light. 

Another strange change. 

She spots him, and he sees a familiar look of stifled recognition. 

He does not know whether to be filled with joy or despair, at her too returning to this timeline. 

“Who are you and where am I?” 

And that hope is suddenly dashed. 

Her voice is croaking from dehydration, and Solas shoves his compromised feelings down into his chest to be addressed later as he gently hands her a cup of water. 

“Thanks,” She grumbles, before dropping the cup at the sight of her marked hand, Solas quickly catching it before it spills. 

“ _What the fuck is this_ ,” She says, wide eyed, aware and alert and now realizing something is very wrong with her situation. She darts her eyes around, taking in her surroundings with startling calculation he has not seen on her face before, looping from the desk in the corner to the curve of Solas’s ears and finally to his carefully placid face. 

“Do you know where you are?”

_Do you know who I am?_

“A strange cabin with a strange man,” Escapes her lips, green eyes staring into his unflinchingly. 

She is different. 

If he says the word grief to himself once more it will finally lose any meaning, but it is an ache so deep within him he cannot shake it. 

“Well, that isn’t wrong,” And there is Varric, stepping inside the cabin in a convincing mime of ease, smile only half strained. His sole focus is on her, raking for any semblance of familiarity, be it her expression to the way she holds her shoulders. 

And even that is different. She sits up straight, in contrast to his Da’lath’in, settled in her own skin. 

Her face does not relax, at the sight of Varric. 

If Solas were to listen, he could hear the man’s heart shatter. 

“Varric Tethras, storyteller, occasional unwelcome tagalong,” The familiar words are like some inside joke between them now, and they do not illicit recognition either. “You, kid, are in a bit of a mess.”

Zoe laughs, and that, at least, is the same, if strained. 

“What, like the glowing green hand didn’t clue me in? What happened to the Conclave? And why am I here?” She asks, edging to the side enough to keep her back to the corner, defensive. 

She hasn’t even manifested her magic yet, Solas suddenly remembers. She is, from her perspective, completely unarmed and surrounded. 

Though, from idle memories of her being smited and knocking a Templar in the head with a fallen staff, clearly not completely helpless. 

Solas backs away swiftly. The last thing he would do—

He has twice cursed the girl before him, thrice if her— _her passing_ is to be considered. Even something so small as creating discomfort is. 

Ah. He is without words, for such a feeling. 

“The Conclave, unfortunately, failed,” Solas explains gently. “The temple exploded, and you were the sole survivor of the tragedy.”

Zoe’s eyes widen, her marked hand likely pulsing with aches clenching around the blanket at her lap. 

“ _That’s_ ,” She says, voice wavering and abruptly stopping. “Shit. Uh, that’s shit.”

Varric snorts, and with a glance Solas sees the dwarf going to start laughing bordering on hysterics if Solas doesn’t continue the conversation along. 

“Varric, could you get Cassandra?” Solas asks. 

Varric looks like he’d much rather grab Zoe and sprint out of this shithole of a human village, but instead he sighs. 

“Sure, Chuckles. Don’t be scared, kid, he’s got sharp teeth but he doesn’t bite. Much,” Varric jokes, laying one sharp look on Solas before leaving the cabin, heavy wooden door shutting soundly behind him. 

The Wolf and teeth jokes, Solas supposes, are only just beginning. 

If Zoe had not— If she hadn’t vouched for him, before, Varric would not be so at ease to joke. 

Solas stares at the Zoe of now, contrasting so subtly yet starkly against her predecessor ( **_a stab to his very spirit_ **), and offers a calm smile. 

“I am Solas. You have nothing to fear from me.”

Something in her face shifts at that, and she lets out an exasperated little huff. 

“Somehow, I doubt that.”

She always had good instincts. 

—

Cassandra Pentaghast loved her Inquisitor. 

She can admit it freely, now. Zoe Avery had been a slip of a teen girl when she was brought to the burning coffin of Divine Justinia’s hopes, tears streaking down her dirtied face. And then, she was her Herald, a sign of the Maker’s will despite the destruction, a child sent to save them from themselves. 

And then she was Inquisitor, sixteen, filling into her own too big shoes and starkly determined. 

Cassandra still loves her, and it was so hard not to. For any that she brought in she only treated with dignity and kindness. Unbearable kindness. 

So much so that it killed her. 

And now she is back in that place after Justinia’s death, _literally_. All their efforts reset by some strange fluke of the Maker, and even Inquisitor Avery is not left untouched by it. 

This time, unlike their first meeting, Zoe meets her gaze evenly. 

Things have changed. She is not a prisoner nor in chains at Cassandra’s mercy. But there is a steel in her spine that had taken longer to form, after becoming a leader for a while. 

Here it is already there, plain. 

“There is a Breach in the sky, and we believe only your mark will close it.”

Cassandra can say that much without ruining the careful peace Solas, Varric and she have forged. Pretending innocence. Pretending they do not know more than they should outside of being more familiar with each other. 

The Maker is laughing at them. Their foolish fumbling. Cassandra can practically hear it echoing from the Golden City. 

This Herald, because that is what she will be no matter her differences from Cassandra’s Inquisitor, does not look surprised. Resigned, perhaps, but not surprised. 

“I don’t know how to fight,” Zoe, _is that even this Herald’s name_ , admits easily, tossing the blanket off of her and slowly moving to her feet, wincing. “But if it needs to be done, I don’t really have a choice.”

“We’ll keep you safe on your way to the valley, Smalls, don’t worry about that,” Varric says with one of his grins built solely to put others at ease. 

Solas gives Varric a pointed look, and Cassandra would not have caught it if she didn’t know the man so well. 

Well. _Know._ There’s a great deal she does not know about that elf for all she does know, and the weight of his secrets frankly are too heavy for even her, _a Seeker,_ to wish to pry. 

And she is a Seeker still. When she awoke in this body that is hers and not, her Seeker armor stared defiantly across from the bed, not yet _tarnished._

Focus, Cassandra. 

“You will need armor, in the very least,” Solas says, turning to grab a set they had found for this express purpose. It had to be taken from a fallen elven scout of Leliana’s, none other the proper size for Zoe. 

Zoe holds out her hands for it, and Solas gently gives them to her.

Zoe turns to Cassandra, then Varric, lips pursed. 

“Uh, I don’t care if you’re there while I change but you probably don’t feel the same,” She says, frank, none of Cassandra’s Inquisitor’s nervousness. 

Cassandra’s face heats, quickly grabbing the two men beside her and tugging them away. 

Propriety! Has she not learned anything from Josephine—

The resounding pain in Cassandra’s chest is like a strike from Iron Bull’s maul. 

—

She doesn’t cry this time. 

Varric notices that, between the terror of bringing Zoe, _his kid, Maker take him his_ **_kid_ **, who he already lost up a mountain to half kill her again and walking past shell shocked soldiers.

“How old are you, kid?” Varric asks. “And your name too, while you’re at it.”

She looks over at him, shaking hands hugging herself to stave off the cold and nerves too, and gives a weak smile. The spectacles are gone, left at the cabin. She says she can see fine without them, the distance is just blurry.

“Seventeen,” She utters, and Varric shoves down the burning in his throat at the declaration. 

She would’ve been seventeen a month after she died. 

Is this what—?

No. Fuck, _no._ Not right now. 

“Zoe Avery,” She says, and it’s like some inside joke, the way she says it, and suddenly Varric wonders if Avery had been a cover name the kid had come up with and no one called her on. 

Her eyes on him, way more analytical than they had ever been before, watching his body language and his face and Varric wants to hope it’s because she remembers and she wants to see if he does too. 

And then, she drops to her knees, jaw locking and her eyes wide, a wounded noise leaving her throat. 

All three of them are on her immediately, Solas sending wave after wave of magic into his mark ( _and fuck if his feelings about that aren’t complicated_ ) to ease Zoe’s suffering, Cassandra’s sword pulled out for any demon stupid enough to appear while she’s down, and Varric with two reassuring hands on her shoulders. 

They are _really_ going to have to get more subtle if they want to keep this from Red. 

“Hey, breathe, kid, you’re going to crack a tooth,” Varric says soothingly. 

Zoe nods, jerkily, blinking tears out of her eyes ( _there they are, she never could avoid them_ ) and taking shaky breaths. 

“We need to move,” She says, standing, a hand going up to rub away the wetness around her eyes. “The world is literally ending.”

Her back is ramrod straight, chin jut forward in defiance too much like—

_Blood falling from pretty pink lips, a dead false god at their feet, and Varric hates himself for ever thinking this could end in anything but tragedy._

And then it’s gone and all that’s left is this Zoe. 

That is going to get really old really fucking fast. 

“Whatever you say, Smalls,” Varric says, instead of saying fuck the world and roping Seeker and Chuckles into stealing her away from the mess that murdered her. 

There’s a look in her eyes at the nickname, but then it’s gone and she’s walking, rubbing the wrist of her left hand in slow circles. 

Varric stays close, close enough with his finger on the trigger of Bianca that if anything so much as flinches nearby it’s getting a bolt. 

He won’t lose her again. 

She’s not her, _he knows that_ , Chuckles is grappling with that right now, Seeker knows, but Varric decided at the sight of her soot stained face and the sound of her breathing that he will never ever watch her die again. He doesn’t care if this Zoe is a fucking dick or Andraste sent, it doesn’t matter, because she’s got her face and her mannerisms and he’s _never standing at the pyre burning for his kid again._

They dumped her ashes in the Waking Sea, like she asked offhand that first time they met. Buttercup ugly sobbing and then shouting into the wind, Iron Lady’s cloudy gaze into the distance, Tiny and Hero having to drag Chuckles away from the shore after he stood still for _six hours._

He will never ever do that again. **_Never_ ** _._

Buttercup is probably already on her way, if she woke up like they did. Spitting mad and full of “ _what the fuck magic fade bullshit_ ”, now that Varric thinks about it. Someone is going to have to do damage control for that. 

When they hit the first bridge and Zoe trips before it turns into rubble, Varric readies his crossbow. 

—

Seeker said, drunk, the night after they dumped her ashes, Smalls killed her first demon by pulling a Broody, shoved her small fist through its ribcage and froze it from the inside. 

It’s different, seeing her do it in person, magic manifesting in that moment at a jab of her fist to turn the despair demon into a ice sculpture, panting as she carefully pulls her hand out. 

Cassandra bashes the ice, shattering it away from the girl. 

“Ow,” Zoe declares, looking down at her split knuckles. 

_That_ is Smalls. The expression of sort of concerned annoyance with a wince that he’s seen a thousand times, looking over at him. 

“Here,” Chuckles says, handing her a healing potion. 

“Thanks _Hahren_ ,” She says, before freezing with the rest of the group. 

Chuckles has turned to stone, Cassandra is searching Zoe’s face for anything of her past self. 

Varric is the one who speaks. 

“Kid,” He starts. “Have you, uh… met us before?” 

She’s wide eyed, looking at Varric. 

“Depends on the definition of met,” She says weakly. “You’re reacting and using nicknames you shouldn’t.”

“What do you mean, _shouldn’t_?” Cassandra asks, while Varric and Chuckles are trying to regain their collective sanity. 

Zoe gives Cassandra one long look. 

“I’m not sure what happened,” She says, careful. “But I’m fairly certain I’m not the Zoe you’re thinking of, and that would have very bad implications.”

“And there’s a difference?” Varric asks, words finally leaving his mouth. 

Zoe makes such a pained expression it fills an already malfunctioning Varric with worry. 

“This isn’t the time, for whatever this is,” Zoe says finally, slowly, tasting the words on her tongue. “The Breach first, the rest later.”

“ _Vin,_ ” Chuckles says, voice hollow. “We must make haste.”

Well, _shit._

—

They close the first tear. 

Solas coaxes the mark into compliance, but Zoe feels the movement of the magic and finishes the action, snapping her wrist to the side as she pulls his veil back together. 

He did not tell the others that he settled the mark under her skin by truly giving it her. Her body proved she was fully capable of handling the magical output time and time again before. She shows her natural proficiency again now. 

( _He will not think on anything but closing his mistake, now. Not until then. Not while his heart_ **_burns_ **.)

“That feels weirder than I thought it would,” She mumbles, arms coming up to hug herself as she starts off again. “Come on, there’s more ahead.”

They walk in weighted, awkward silence, none of their usual chatter to fill the air. 

( _“Usual” ignores the grieving weight they all held onto the past two months, future, now. No chatter, not when the glue that held them washed away._ )

They take a protective formation around her. Cassandra at head, Solas at her right and Varric at her rear. The rock face they walk beside giving natural cover on that open side. 

They all, even Zoe, Solas now knows, expect the cluster of demons ahead, and Zoe is quickly pulled to cover, Varric at her side playing immediate defense while Solas watches Cassandra’s back. 

And then they are walking again. 

The Breach pulses, before growing, and Zoe is stumbling, one hand over her mouth and the mark glowing starkly against her leather armor. 

“Kid are you—?” Varric starts, but Zoe waves him off, hand trembling. 

“Fine. It won’t hurt once the Breach is stable,” She says, already moving onward again. 

Zoe, but not their Zoe. How? She seems as though she has seen this all before, known them before. 

( _A nail in his Da’lath’in’s coffin or a splintering crack in its frame, Solas doesn’t know._ )

The next tear comes quicker, now that Zoe knows the feel of the mark she disrupts the rift with relative ease, staggering the demons that come through, before finally closing it. 

“Open the gates!” Cassandra calls, and they do. 

Something in Zoe’s gait immediately shifts, now that they are near others. A quieter presence.

The arguing of Leliana and the Chantry Brother then take Solas’s attention. 

“This is pointless!” The Chantry Brother cries. “We should elect a new divine and defer to her order on this.”

“You would have us wait through months of bureaucracy as the sky opens before us?” Leliana asks, eyes narrowed. 

The Chantry Brother opens his mouth, before he spots Zoe between Solas and Varric. 

“There you are! She should be prepared for transport to Val Royeaux for trial!” The Brother spits. 

Zoe shrinks beside them, unmarked hand going to Varric’s jacket and such a real look of fear on her face that Solas must take a moment to recognize it as fake. 

( _How many times did she lie like this before?_ )

It echos in his mind, the half forgotten words of the nightmare demon at Adament when he looked at her and laughed. 

“ _Little Da’lath’in, how they love your honey coated lies._ ” It said in a deep, purring voice. “ _Trash makes trash, hm?_ ”

The momentary look of anger at the last phrase, that, Solas remembers quite clearly. 

“She will be going nowhere,” Cassandra scoffs with narrowed eyes. “You think a teenage girl is capable of this destruction, Chancellor Roderick?” 

“I think there are a grand many things I didn’t realize possible now possible, you thug!” 

“We need to get me to the Breach,” Zoe says, quietly. “Or there won’t be time for whatever trial you’re thinking of.”

“You lost your scouts down the mountain path, did you not, Leliana?” Cassandra asks. 

“Yes, but it would be the safest route in comparison to a frontal assault.”

“Let’s do it,” Zoe interjects. “A frontal assault would only create more death. Pull the front line far back enough that they can keep the demons away from Haven, while we head for the Breach itself.”

There. He sees her in that simple plan. 

Splinter or nail?

—

“ _Where the fuck is she?!_ ”

Varric guessed right on how fast Buttercup came running, at least. 

Sera, way more feral looking than usual hops off of her horse and stares Varric down like she’s contemplating sticking some arrows in him. 

“Complicated,” Varric says, casually as he starts leading her into Haven. And then, quieter. “Pipe down, Buttercup, not everyone is in the know.”

Sera has a wild look in her eyes. 

“Fade magic _bullshite._ ”

He really has to agree. 

They step inside the Cabin of their holy Herald, _his kid, his kid is alive and different but thank fuck she is alive_ , and Sera is at Zoe’s bedside in an instant, checking her pulse. 

She’s hissing fuck to herself again and again, before hopping back like her hands have been burned. 

“This— _what the fuck._ ”

This is probably the milder of reactions she could be having. 

“We— we _burned her._ We dumped her ashes. She’s dead,” Sera tells him, eyes wide and watery. “What in Andraste’s flaming _tits._ ”

Solas comes through the door then, holding herbs and potions. 

Sera snaps her head over to him and _glares._

“Did you have some shit to do with this, weird wolfy—!” And now she’s waving an arrow at him. 

Solas is still as stone, accepting the abuses Sera throws until she tires out, tossing the arrow with startling accuracy to stick into one of the wooden beams of the wall. 

“No, I had nothing to do with this,” Solas says, finally, gently setting down the potions and herbs at the desk. “I’m sorry nonetheless that you are brought back into it, Sera.”

Simple words but Varric knows he means them. Solas and Sera may butt heads, but when it came to Zoe—

They didn’t argue, after the burning. Respect to her memory, the peace she died to create. 

“Shut it, big bad Wolf,” Sera grumbles, roughly wiping her face. “I thought this was done, after she died? Why isn’t it _done_?”

“A question for the ages, Buttercup,” Varric says, eyes on the comatose form of the girl they’re talking about. “A question for the ages.”

—

Leliana is aware something is amiss. 

Cassandra, though she improved somewhat throughout her time in the Inquisition, is not a creature of subterfuge, something she was teased for more than once by the others of the Circle. 

“What is that girl to you, Cassandra?”

This Leliana is not softened. 

Cassandra had known that. She knew Leliana’s time with their Inquisitor washed years of blood off her hands and left her younger for it, a soon to be Divine worthy of such a position. 

It is stark now, how much two years healed her. 

“She reminds me of one I have lost,” Cassandra settles for. It’s not a lie, and Cassandra could not lie to Leliana, not after so long. Even she knows that this secret of their new place in time is not one to be shared with anyone. 

Leliana’s lips purse, before her eyes soften, nodding. 

“Varric as well seems familiar with her,” Leliana says contemplatively. “Has he told you why?”

Cassandra shakes her head. “I will ask the dwarf, if you wish. As of current I’m more concerned on who caused Justinia’s death, and where I must point my sword.”

She does not have to fake the grief that comes with Justinia’s name, at least. The candle light flickers in the Warroom and Cassandra’s heart aches. 

It aches for what they built and must start anew. It aches for her Inquisitor ( _Not a new ache, a almost familiar one with these past months, looking in places she would be and instead only being met with disappointment. Missing her insight, her leadership, something as simple as her gentle hugs._ ).

But Cassandra is used to grief. She is used to losing what she has built and put faith into. And she will not break now, not when they have a chance to fix what mistakes they made and save lives that were once lost. 

Justinia may be gone from their fingers, but in the very least this Herald is not. People they lost in Haven are not. 

Leliana nods. 

“You are right, we must focus on the task at hand. I have sent for our Ambassador already, she will be arriving in a day or two’s time.”

Cassandra feels the pommel of her sword, one she has not seen in at least a year, lost at some point in the many weapons Inquisitor Avery saw fit to outfit her with, and grounds herself. 

To work. 

—

Zoe takes stock of her surroundings when she wakes up. 

One, she’s in Thedas. Fuck Thedas. Fuck their Chantry. Fuck their wars and classism and racism. She regrets ever writing fanfiction for this stupid stupid world. 

Two, speaking of fanfiction. The characters aren’t acting like they should. They’re looking at her like she killed their puppy, or rather, was the puppy who died. _That doesn’t spell well for her_. 

Especially not Solas’s reaction to Hahren or Varric’s nickname Smalls. Because _that_ , that implies things she would really like to be wrong about. 

Three, she’s gonna lose that hand. 

She looks down at said hand, spiraling green pulsing against the soft skin, indented like a scar. It doesn’t hurt anymore, thank any god listening, no more pain gripping her arm by her veins everytime the Breach gets bigger. 

Four, she is unbearably alone. 

Her palm smacks her mouth at the first, choking sob. 

It’s better to address that now, ain’t it?

She will never graduate highschool. She will never hear her planet’s music again. She will never get rickrolled again and she’ll never hug her mom. She won’t find out how the pandemic ends or if—

Fuck. _The pandemic_. What if she’s a carrier?

Her marked hand grips the fabric of the shirt she’s in tightly, hand burning with the pressure. 

How the _fuck_ is she going to do this?

She wrote books about it all the time, right? Wrote and wrote and fed her escapism and loved the characters but that is _books._ Real life stings. 

The air is cold and out the window she can see the sun glittering on the snow and to her side she can see a crow in a cage who’s watching her meltdown. 

Zoe takes one, deep, halting breath. Exhales. Let’s her tears fall and her vision blur. 

She needs to make peace with this now. There will not be time for it later save late nights in cold tents. 

Christ, she’s going to walk across half of fucking Thedas for a world that isn’t even hers. She isn’t even arguing with that fact, how could she make any other choice? How selfish would it be to just say, “ _Oh! Haha, sorry, I’m not from here. It’s really not my problem if an ancient Elvhen god wants to destroy everything with one Blighted Magister, even if it was an oopsie. See ya!_ ”

She’s lost her entire world. Her history, her culture, her _people._ Lost. 

For what? Some cosmic _fluke_? 

All she remembers is blinking into existence before the door to the Divine’s Chamber. She doesn’t know how she’s going to explain _that._

She’s going to fucking kill god for this. She’s going to stain her hands with his golden icor for this sin and she doesn’t really have a plan for what happens after. 

She sobs, and fuck if she doesn’t hate crying. She hates being weak and she hates mourning and how could she be surprised by this turn of events? She’s never found stability before, the universe just decided to give her another curveball. 

For fuck’s sake she isn’t even eighteen yet. She shouldn’t have to _deal_ with this. 

The door opens, and swiftly Zoe’s hand darts to the blanket, wiping her face of all evidence and being very glad that her eyes never get too red when she cries. 

And there, before her, is one Solas. Fen’heral. God of Rebellion and being a dick to his lover because he can’t own up to being wrong and tell them the truth. 

She stares on, openly wary. They’ve already all come fairly clean on knowing something is amiss, she won’t play pretend right now in this private place. 

“Are you alright?” He asks, genuinely concerned, and _that_ is what’s concerning Zoe. The genuine care. The way he gently threaded magic through the mark without care to ease it as best he could. 

She doesn’t say the name Da’lath’in aloud, not yet. She wants to be wrong. Because the alternative is these fuckers somehow knowing her first ever Self-Insert for Dragon Age and she can’t really mentally handle that right now. 

“Just fine, thank you,” Zoe says, voice wavering, but face blank. “And you?”

“I am well, all things considered, but I am far more concerned for your condition,” Solas says in his familiar lulling cadence. “You have been unconscious for three days.”

Zoe grimaces. 

“If only I could return to it. I haven’t slept that well in years,” She says blandly, eyeing Solas’s posture. “We should probably address the—” Not elephant. “—druffalo in the room.”

Solas sighs, nodding. 

“There are three others who would benefit from this conversation, I think,” Solas says. “I will return with them.”

Zoe nods, because what else is she supposed to do?

Solas walks out of the room, heavy door closing behind him, and Zoe looks up at the ceiling, sighing with her whole heart. 

She would like to be wrong. She would very much like to be wrong. Maybe she should play stupid?

No, too late for that. _Motherfucker_. 

Solas appears again, but this time, Varric, Cassandra and Sera(?!) are with him. 

“How are you feeling, kid?” Varric asks, while Sera seems to be staring at her like she’s going to jump out of the bed and attack her. 

“Like I want to go back to bed, but there’s not much to be done about that,” Zoe says, frowning. “What does the name Zoe Avery mean to you?”

It’s not her actual last name. She wasn’t stupid enough at fifteen to use her _whole_ name, but she kept the first one. It was her own self-insert after all. 

All four of them tense, and Zoe wants to cry. 

“Why are you older, now?” Sera finally says, eyes narrowed and expression sour. 

“Depends,” Zoe says. “How did you get back in time?”

They all tense again. Zoe really really wants to start crying again. 

“How do you know of this?” Cassandra asks, looking very upset. “You are not her, correct?”

Zoe shakes her head. 

“Not in the way that matters.”

Not ever in the way that matters. 

“How did she die?”

“The final battle with Corypheus,” Solas says, face like stone. 

Well. She certainly didn’t fucking write that. 

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Zoe says aloud, flopping back to lying face up on the bed, feeling miserable. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“What do you mean wasn’t meant to happen?” Varric asks, dread and grief in his voice and god doesn’t Zoe feel like shit for it. 

“Didn’t write that,” Zoe says, false humor in her voice. “Didn’t write anything after Adamant besides AUs. Shit didn’t even get published.”

“Are you saying that we are from a _book_?!” Cassandra asks, probably wide eyed and definitely sounding incredulous. 

“Clearly not, since you’re living and breathing,” Zoe says. “But yeah, technically I know you from the fiction that I wrote. Think Varric’s Tale of the Champion, but Zoe wasn’t your canon Inquisitor.”

She’s gonna be stabbed for this shit. 

“ _What the fuck_ ,” Sera cries. “More— more _weird shite._ Speak normal!”

Zoe looks over at Sera, grimacing. 

“Would you prefer I _lie_ , babe?” Zoe asks. “I can lie, if you want. Pretend I don’t know any of you and let your mourn in peace.”

Zoe wants to mourn in peace. 

“Let me get this straight,” Varric says, running a hand down his face looking ten years older. “You wrote a book, didn’t even finish it, and now you’re in your book? That we’re characters in?”

He’s always been a quick one. 

“Clearly not actual characters, you’re very apparently real, which makes me very uncomfortable to have written about you at all,” Zoe says. “But yeah. Whatever is going on wasn’t meant to happen though, because I’m not from Thedas and your Zoe wasn’t meant to die.”

“What was meant to happen to her?” Solas asks, voice quiet. 

Poor fucker. 

“Run around with you, mostly, Solas. Hep you work through your whole Wolf problems, properly grieve. Fight to mage and nonhuman rights,” Zoe explains. “Maybe get thrown into another reality or two, but otherwise she wasn’t meant to die. What part of the final battle did she die in? And how?”

“We are not speaking of her memory like this,” Cassandra hisses. “She was not some— some _character._ She was a living person who deserves respect in death.”

Poor Cassandra. God, poor all of them. Does this mean all of the Inner Circle are back? Is this some divine punishment for Zoe never finishing her first fic for the fandom?

She’s gonna fucking kill god. 

“She closed the breach with the Orb,” Solas says, plainly. “And then, was run through by a final attack of Corypheus.”

That.

That is not how it was meant to play out. 

Unless—

“Oh no,” Zoe whispers. 

This is why we don’t give our fifteen year old comfort characters to cope with our depression _suicidal ideation_. 

Fuck, it would’ve been the perfect time, too. Her job was done. She could finally die and not feel bad, and avoid the trauma of her hopping off her balcony after the party. 

Shit shit _shit._

Oh that’s just horrible. Even she wouldn’t write that. 

“What?” Varric asks. 

Should she tell them?

Is— No. No, she shouldn’t. They don’t deserve that. 

Zoe shakes her head. “Nothing, that just sucks.”

“You’re lying,” Solas says frankly. 

“For your own good,” Zoe retorts, eyes snapping to Solas’s. “And for her.”

And suddenly, Solas seems to realize what she already had.

“No,” Solas says, firmly. “She wouldn’t have.”

Zoe snorts. 

“She was me and I was her. At that age I would’ve too.”

Solas looks suddenly like his entire heart has been torn from his chest, and Zoe feels very suddenly like the worst person to walk the earth. 

She’s never writing again. 

“What?” Sera asks, frantic. “What? What is it?”

Zoe shakes her head, shutting her eyes. 

What was it Socrates wrote in Antigone? 

It’s the dead, not the living, who make the longest demands?

Arguably, the living must live with their dead for far longer. 

Zoe feels grief, in that very second. Guilt too. If she’d never written her coping mechanism fic to handle that nasty case of depression they likely wouldn’t be in this situation. 

Well, she probably wouldn’t be alive though, so it’s a give and take. 

And she technically in one sense, isn’t alive. Unfortunate technicalities. 

Haha. Name drop. Jesus Christ. 

“She wouldn’t have,” Solas says, voice raw. “She had so much to keep her here.”

Zoe sniffles, feeling her throat burn. 

“Since when did that matter when you’re thinking about killing yourself, Solas?” Zoe asks, and she hates that he’s so smart. This added pain is not his to shoulder. 

“No,” Varric says brokenly, finally realizing, but Sera’s stomping over and grabbing Zoe by her collar. She lets her. 

“You shut up,” Sera says, eyes narrowed. “You _shut up._ ”

Zoe nods. 

“I’m sorry.”

Zoe knows from that moment forward, it’s going to be a very bad day that’s going to turn into at least a very bad week. 

Well. At least she’s not dead. _Yet_. 

Shit, that’s poor taste all things considered. Nevermind. At least if she’s got fictional her’s magical resistance she’s keeping the arm. 

Fucking christ. 


	2. “My name is Brutus and my name means Heavy.” (i don’t want what you had, i wanna be you)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is just some metal lyrics from a song I listened to writing this, lol. Enjoy.

Josephine, as expected, did not remember her.

“It is a pleasure, Miss. Avery,” Josephine greets with a smile reserved for making good impressions. 

Cassandra is not surprised, but is disappointed all the same. 

This Zoe does not show anything though, a kind smile on her lips as she nods to her in greeting. 

“I like your dress. Are you cold being up in the mountains on such short notice?” Zoe asks, and Cassandra knows it is a genuine question. There, there is her Inquisitor, no matter the madness she admitted to this morning she is still honest in her genuine concern for those around her. 

“It is not ideal, but it is worth it to aid the Inquisition,” Josephine says simply. 

Next is Cullen, who looks at Zoe and sees only a small untrained, newly awakened mage with a powerful mark on her palm. 

“Cullen Rutherford, Commander of the Inquisition’s forces,” Cassandra introduces. 

“You seem to be faring well, all things considered,” Cullen says, one hand on the pommel of his sword in comfort. 

“All things considered meaning my new hand accessory or the world almost ending?” Zoe asks dryly, and Cullen huffs a laugh. 

“Both.”

This, Cassandra notes, is another difference. 

Charisma did not come easily to her Inquisitor, not without going through her anxious, grimly determined exterior or when she faked it to gain others trust. 

“And finally Leliana, you have met her previously,” Cassandra says, gesturing to her. 

Leliana smiles, nodding in acknowledgement. 

“My position here requires a certain _discretion_.”

The familiar words come easy, for Cassandra. 

“She is our Spymaster,” Cassandra says frankly, and the small knowing smile Zoe gives her almost makes this insanity worth it. 

“I’d say it’s good to meet you all, if the situation were less dire,” Zoe says, shoving her hands in the pockets of her warm winter jacket. “But I assume we have important things to discuss, including people making me their false prophet.”

Cassandra doesn’t flinch, at the easy statement. She knows Zoe does not follow Andraste’s light. Before she would’ve, but now she knows it’s for nought. 

“ _It doesn’t matter what I say,_ ” Zoe had once murmured, running a small hand through her hair. “ _If they have decided I’m a hand of their Maker, then a hand of their Maker I am._ ”

“Yes, that,” Leliana says, a hand going to the report Cassandra knows holds the letter she received from Mother Gisselle. 

“How does that make you feel, by the way?” Cullen asks. 

Zoe huffs a laugh. “Oh you don’t want my honest answer, everyone in this room is too Andrastian to handle it.”

“You aren’t Andrastian?” Josephine asks, eyes widening only a bit. 

“I hate organized religion,” Zoe says plainly, and Cassandra must do a double take at that. The girl usually contained more tact. “So no. I don’t follow the Chant.”

“Regardless,” Leliana says, laying the letter down on the center of the war table. “Being named a Herald to Andraste has aided us in one thing, at least, besides a Chantry denouncement.”

“That was quick,” Cullen grumbles. 

“Mother Gisselle in the Hinterlands wishes to meet our Herald, and offers to speak to the fellow clerics on our behalf,” Leliana finishes. 

Zoe plucks up the letter and scans the page quickly. 

“Well, that is convenient. How are we getting to a warzone from the Frostbacks?” 

Cassandra’s heart aches, seeing her here like this, completely in her element and so unbearably familiar. 

But she must take pause. It isn’t her, not in the way it matters, as she said.

Why is nothing ever simple? Cassandra is not built for such a complicated, twisting world.

—

With a thunk, an arrow lands in the center of the target. 

“Good aim.”

Zoe turns, not surprised to see Varric and flexing her fingers that just drew back her bow. 

“I try. Now make me hit something moving and it’s a different story,” Zoe says quietly, eyes soft as they lay on him and Varric tries to imagine being put into one of his own books and face the tragedies with real life consequences. 

It feels terrible. And he has a lot of sympathy for the kid. 

His kid. Maybe not _his_ his kid, but still the same. Doesn’t have the memories or same experiences but she knows. And that’s enough for him. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Zoe asks, careful, eyes darting to their mostly empty surroundings. 

Varric laughs, and then he has to stop because he’ll start crying. 

“I want things to stay normal for once,” Varric says. “But normal, that just ain’t for us is it, kid?”

Zoe grins, and Varric didn’t know someone could grin with literal sorrow in their eyes. 

“You deserve better, Varric Tethras, better and the world. You get that, right?”

Zoe turns and nocks another arrow, drawing carefully and shutting one eye, before loosing it. 

It thunks beside the other one, carefully beside the other one to avoid hitting it. 

“You practice a lot with that?” Varric asks, instead of addressing how she’s always told other people they deserve so much and never asked for anything in return. 

“Not as much as I should,” Zoe says, holding up a baby soft hand in demonstration. “But I’ve been shooting since I was seven, so I’d think I know what I’m doing.”

The way she says shooting doesn’t just mean bows, Varric catches it in her tone. 

He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t know how much he wants to know about this version of his kid’s past because that is more than he thinks he ever got out of her besides “My mother _was_ a soap maker and my father _was_ a carpenter, I _had_ two sisters.”

Was, had. Special emphasis. 

“She never told you that, huh?” Zoe asks with a hum, a knowing look on her face. “There was a need for secrecy. The more she told, the less the rest of you would fill in on your own. Don’t have to lie if people make it up for you.”

It’s like a punch to the gut, that statement, and Varric can’t even refute it because she of all people would know. 

“And what was she hiding?” Varric asks. 

Zoe grins again, loosing another arrow. 

“Same things as me, mostly. Just less complicated. Her family didn’t die thanks to a little village purging, and she didn’t come to the Conclave on purpose.”

Oh. 

_Shit._

“That—,” Varric starts, and stops. 

“She was a good liar,” Varric finishes finally, a lump in his throat. 

“She lost everything,” Zoe says green eyes grey in the dimming light of the evening, breath puffing out pale in the air before her. “So it wasn’t all a lie, and it wasn’t hard to be convincing.”

And the kid before him lost everything too. Doesn’t even have the benefit of memories of being with them, just knows them like a author knows their characters and _fuck_ if that isn’t horrible.

Varric can’t think too hard on the idea of he himself being fictional somewhere. He can only handle so much weird shit and the going back in time is enough for him. 

That’s why she felt for Chuckles. 

She knew how he felt. Viscerally. 

Suddenly, a lot of things make sense. 

( _“I’m such a bad liar, Varric,” Zoe says with a huffing laugh, after the Winter Palace’s first night of the ball, beside him in a little carriage. “I don’t know how any of these rich assholes manage to say so much and mean absolutely nothing.”_ )

( _“I’m not from Tevinter,” Zoe says with a wince. “So stop whatever weird backstory you’re making in your head.”_ )

( _Zoe stares up at the watercolor remnants of the Breach, breaths clogged with blood. “We’re gonna fix this, Kid, alright? We’re gonna save you, you just have to stay right here and awake, okay?” Varric hisses, hands over the holes in her chest trying to do something useful. Zoe shakes her head, looks at him and shakes her head._

_“You think I’ll see my stars again?”_

_She died before he had an answer._ )

Fuck. 

_Fuck fuck_ **_fuck._ **

Varric wipes away stray tears with a grimace, and Zoe, this Zoe, gives him a look that speaks of guilt and remorse. 

“Do you want a hug?”

Yeah, honestly. 

“Dunno if I’ll keep it all in if you do, kid,” Varric says with a snort. 

Zoe smiles at him, so knowing and kind and she sets down the bow in the snow. 

“It’s okay to be sad,” She says, and suddenly he’s being hugged and—

And shit. 

Varric sighs, and at the end it turns into something more like little sobs that are kind of embarrassing, and her hugs her back, carefully, wary of breaking her. 

She’s still only a little taller than him, even now. 

“She was your kid, and you had to bury her, and I’m sorry that you are hurting and have to see her ghost.”

“That’s not on you, Smalls,” Varric says roughly. “It’s never been on you.”

This isn’t her, but it is, so fuck it. Fuck it all. Zoe is Zoe, weird circumstances or not. 

Zoe sniffles. 

“It kind of is, though, in this case.”

“What a pair we make,” Varric huffs. “Two authors stuck reliving our works.”

Zoe laughs, but Varric can feel wetness growing on his shoulder. 

“This is only going to get more awkward when the others show up,” Zoe says. “I already think Sera’s going to kill me in my sleep.”

“They’ll just be happy to see you’re alive.”

Varric can hear her breathing. That’s enough for him. His kid is alive and not, but mostly alive. 

—

Cole is next. 

“You are back!” Cole says, hands cupping Zoe’s face with the gentleness one handles porcelain with, face absolutely filled with sorrow. “If felt it, I felt it all but I didn’t realize. You— you told me that wasn’t the answer. That wasn’t how you help!”

Zoe’s face crumples. 

“Cole, honey, I’m not,” She says, gently holding his hands in hers. “I’m not her. Not in the way that matters.”

Cole blinks, nodding, but not happier at all. 

“Why?” He asks. 

“Because she was tired, Cole,” Zoe says, pulling his hands from her face slowly and holding them between her own. “And she wanted to go home.”

“She— _I don’t care if it’s nothing, anymore. I want to rest now. I’m so sorry._ She called to me and I was too far. She didn’t want them to _know._ _Cowardice_.”

“And it’s not your fault,” Zoe says, rubbing a thumb across his knuckles soothingly. “She made her choice, and we can only live with it.”

Solas has to take a shaking, steadying breath, eyes shut tightly. 

He cannot describe the loathing choking him from the inside, in this moment. 

He feels so unbearably stupid. How did he not treat the signs with the weight they deserved? She had shown signs at _Haven_ , void take him, and when she stopped showing them he was foolish enough to think it was healing, not _resignation_. Certainty. 

( _Cracks or nails, or is the coffin already shattered? Throwing all his failings once again in his face. He could not even save one human girl from her own mind, how could he have ever deluded himself into believing he could fix his previous mistakes?_ )

“She told me it wasn’t the way to fix it,” Cole repeats. “Why did she _lie_?”

“The only person she lied to in that was herself, love, no one else,” Zoe murmurs. “She was _ill_ , Cole, and she decided she’d rather die than be ill anymore. Pain too much. That’s no one’s fault, especially not now.”

“You won’t leave?” Cole asks, suddenly, hands coming up to her shoulders and gripping them firmly, a seriousness and lucidity in his eye not usually seen. 

“No,” Zoe says, firm. “I’m not as ill as she was anymore, and when I’m sad I’ll be sure to tell you. Okay, Cole? I won’t leave. Not like that.”

“ _That was me, staring at the ceiling thinking of dying, and then it was her and then she was dead and now I stay._ You just said it wasn’t your fault,” Cole murmurs. 

“It isn’t,” Zoe says. “But the mind forgets.”

“Intrusive thoughts,” Cole says, nodding. “ _Goodness is not the absence of terrible thoughts, but the morals and will to overcome them._ ”

Solas feels like a voyeur, watching this exchange, and grimaces. “I will leave now if—“

Zoe turns, shaking her head at him. 

“Nah, it’s fine, Kahgrohiik. I don’t have anything to hide.”

Solas wonders on the name, but does not ask. He has no right to pry. Thrice cursed is the girl before him. He will not curse her once more with his curiosity nor his pride. 

“She knows your pain,” Cole tells Solas, eyes still on Zoe, drinking in the details of her face with an understanding he didn’t have before he became more human, the need to remember little things like the way someone’s face curves. “And you know hers. I can see you past the mark, not bright like before while you let me.”

Zoe winces. 

“I don’t know exactly what it’s like, what you went through, but I do know mourning. Dunno if I’ve ever known anything better than mourning.”

Solas remembers, then, that she has lost her entire world. 

She has not spoken much, not yet, or perhaps she never will, but the very clothes she appeared in were nothing he has seen before, her skill in reading and maths far more expansive than the common person she claims to be, and her eyes too knowing and not when they look at the world around her. Drinking in every detail as if it is new.

“I do not know if that would be wise.”

Sharing such things between them.

( _Becoming close to her once more._ )

“ _Like Icarus and the sun._ Wings of wax?” Cole murmurs, looking over at Zoe with confusion. 

“Not the most effective,” Zoe says, eyes flickering from Solas’s to Cole’s. “But the part they forget, is that Icarus laughed the whole way down.”

“ _Wax burning his thighs to his chin, lips pulled up in grin,_ ” Cole supplies, eyes going distant then not. “I should not hear so well. After I became more I could not hear like that.”

Zoe hums. “Must be the old body. Do you feel like you? Less or more?”

“How can you be less?” Cole asks, head tilted. 

“How can you be more?” Zoe poses, before smiling. “All fair questions.”

Solas thinks it’s the almost familiarity that hurts the most. 

The way her face twists the same but her body is more open. The way she soothes and holds but now without hesitation or anxiety. The thoughtfulness no longer juxtaposed with naivety. 

“Regardless, I’m here for you, Solas.” Zoe turns to him, and she knows. She likely knows the very essence of his being to have written of him. 

He does not admit that her willingness to give so much no longer only inspires him. Now, he is in equal parts scared. Because to be selfless is to give the self away if done too much, and he watched her give her self away on a cold mountain in the dark trying to stay her gushing lifeblood already once. 

“I will keep it in mind.”

He could not forget. Not forget her understanding once in convincing him away from his foolish plans and back into the light for at least the Inner Circle. Not forget the relieved smile she gave him after he revealed himself and swore to her on his very life he would not tear the veil down in a way that harms others. 

( _Was she relieved because she knew the world would be safe if she were no longer there to stop him?_ )

( _How long did she plan—?_ )

Madness. These questions will lead to madness. 

They are useless, are they not?

She is dead in the way that matters. And he will never be able to ask anyone but this other form of her. Older and the same but not quite.

She would know the answers, likely. 

He can see it in her eyes. She knows the measure of her own soul and so she knows the measure of his Da’lath’in’s. He doesn’t want to know. He refuses, even, unless he must. 

He can not live another great sorrow and live. Not even the Uthenura could save him from such a thing nor would he want it. 

Solas is old. He is so old he has known the world for longer than any alive now, every shift in the planet’s crust and every groan of tectonic plates beneath the ocean he can feel under his skin. 

He has helped build and then destroyed his own people. Attempted to destroy this reality anew in hopes of reversing his decision. He has lost everything he has ever loved and he will not do so again. 

He has become entirely too contemplative with age. Mythal would laugh at him. 

“Solas?”

Solas focuses again, and sees Cole has one hand in Zoe’s, and Zoe staring at Solas with her head tilted. 

“Ah, forgive me, I was distracted.”

“Forgiven,” Zoe says, and when has she ever done anything but that? “I was asking if you felt uncomfortable with me using Elvhen near you.”

Solas feels his stomach drop. 

Elvhen was… important, between he and his Da’lath’in. Him sharing what he could of his culture and her never judging or pressing save for academic questions. Of course she would be concerned about using it near him. 

“I hold no claim on a language,” Solas says. 

Zoe huffs. 

“I won’t poke places that hurt because you want to give nonanswers, Solas. I know how you reacted to her name for you when it came from my lips.”

Solas. 

Solas is terrified of losing again. 

Hahren. He does not know if he is ready to be that again. 

“It’s okay,” Zoe says, reaching over and patting his arm carefully, movement slow enough for him to move away. “You don’t have to figure it out now, my dude. I’ll refrain till you figure it out, and if it’s never I’m cool with that too.”

Kindness. He was right, before. Were she a spirit, she would be Compassion. Always, even in this older odder form she is Compassion. 

It is no wonder Cole enjoys her company so much, even now. She most embodies his core.

( _A knife slicing through a too soft palm, Varric bleeding under her. “I will not lose again,” from gritted teeth, as blood glows._

 _They did not speak of that ever again. Not between each other, and not in the privacy of Skyhold. For Inquisitor Zoe Avery was Herald to Andraste, and no one could know she resorted to blood magic to save another._ )

—

They leave for the Hinterlands with what’s formed of the Inner Circle. 

Varric says he’s sent correspondence to all the other members. Vivienne and Bull have confirmed their status’s as knowing, Dorian and Blackwall likely having received theirs but not responding yet thanks to their current conditions. 

Zoe takes one deep breath. Holds. Let’s it out slowly. One deep breath. Holds. Let’s it out slowly. 

They have to walk, no horses to spare yet. Zoe has always had shitty feet, and boy are they going to ache. 

Plus, unending grief. There’s that. She misses cars, and she fucking despised driving them. Misses her dad’s solid presence. Misses chicken adobo. 

God, do they even have rice and soy sauce here? She’s gonna die if not. She’s _Asian._ She may be white passing but her taste buds can and will die on a sole diet of Ferelden food. She ate Jalepenos for _funsies_ for fuck’s sake. 

She would say she misses school. It would be a lie. School doubled her depression just by waking up in the morning at ungodly hours. 

God. The world is ending and people are dying and she’s complaining about school making her big sad. There is literal actual state sanctioned _slavery_ up north. Prevalent racism and classism literally everywhere. There’s so many much bigger fucking problems right now. 

“Are you well?” Cassandra asks, looking over at Zoe. 

Zoe realizes she stopped breathing, and starts doing that again. 

“Depends on the definition of well, Seeker,” Zoe says, wishing she had a mask. Better yet, she wished everyone had a mask on. She’s feeling all the germs spreading as they literally speak. 

Ah. She’s a bit manic right now isn’t she? Or that’s just the usual ADD. Now she’s never getting that diagnosis. 

“Mentally,” Cassandra says, and then Zoe has to remember these adults have just realized the other version of her killed herself the other day, and she shares her face and her self. 

“Worrying about things,” Zoe says, shifting gears. The refugees, the mages, bandits. People she needs to help. “The Hinterlands is a mess, you no doubt remember. And we need to fix it by killing the least amount of people possible.”

Zoe doesn’t want to kill anyone. The idea abhors her, frankly. Using her hands to harm, let alone kill another. But if someone wants to kill her, well. 

She’s a child. If an adult looks at her and says “I’m gonna kill her”, they’re free game and do not deserve her remorse. 

She’ll still feel like shit, but she has to rationalize it somehow. For her conscience and her sanity, as well as her physical safety. 

Zoe isn’t going to die here before she’s even eighteen. She wants to live a long, fulfilled life and die old and satisfied. Not some young spark doused before it could burn. 

Though, sometimes the cards fall the way they fall, and we must play with the deck we’re given. Unless you’re rich and privileged, then you can cheat and pull cards out of your sleeves.

“And if we must kill?” Solas asks. Not because he wants the answer, but because they were all thinking it. 

Zoe shrugs. 

“Then they chose their fate. I can help and plead all I want, but some people won’t listen. What matters is persuading the ones who do and poaching them for the Inquisition.”

“So what? They’re just _tools_ for you?” Sera asks, and _that_ is a dangerous question from her. 

Zoe shakes her head, swiftly. 

“People aren’t tools. They can’t be discarded or traded. I only want them in the Inquisition so they have a reliable income and are at least fed. Most of the bandits are doing it because they’re hungry.”

They return to silence again, and this one is heavy enough that Zoe knows they’re thinking of her fifteen year old suicidal ghost. 

—

Sera isn’t stupid. 

Some people look at her and say so, but _they’re_ the stupid ones. Too up on their high horse to see anything but their noses. 

Zoe never once called her it. 

She doesn’t know why it mattered, doesn’t know why she cares so much because Zoe is _dead_ and she’s left like always. 

But she isn’t, somehow, and is, and Sera sits down heavily beside her with her arms crossed and doesn’t pay attention to the surprised look on her face at her showing up. 

“Explain it to me,” Sera says, because Zoe’s always been good at explaining even if this Zoe is a different one. 

Zoe sets down the charcoal and paper she’d been sketching on, and Sera notices she’s gotten much better than before. Faces the right shape. 

“Which part?” Zoe asks, voice quiet. 

Sera purses her lips, jaw clenching. 

“All of it.”

Zoe nods, rubbing charcoal smudged hands together but never getting any off. 

“Well. When I was fifteen, I wanted to die.”

Sera feels her stomach drop because whatever she was expecting she didn’t expect _that_ right out the gate. 

Sera studies her face, not knowing how she could be so, so _normal_ about it. Just a fact. Sky is blue, arrows are quick, when she was fifteen she wanted to die. 

Zoe huffs a laugh, a hand going up to run through her hair. 

“Well, wanted to die isn’t really right,” She says, slowly. “I was tired of not feeling anything at all. So, I decided to write about it.”

Sera spots the others settling by the fire half hesitantly because they don’t want to intrude or some shit, but they need to know this too anyways. Creepy— _Cole_ , isn’t anywhere in sight but Sera knows he’s around somewhere listening. 

“Had this story I just read, about a person who becomes a Herald and then an Inquisitor, and I thought, “I wonder what would happen if _I_ were there”. So I wrote it.”

Zoe keeps eye contact with Sera while she talks, eyes never straying, always focused. ( _Sera missed that._ )

“It was a coping mechanism,” Zoe explains. “I could write about how shitty I felt, find new ways to handle it, and get a healthy dose of escapism too. That’s the Zoe you know, the personification of my depression warring with my suicidal selflessness and naivety.”

“But she was _real_ ,” Sera says, feeling angry at it all. 

Zoe nods. “And she didn’t follow what I wrote either, or at least not the way I intended in my book.”

“And what did you intend?” Solas asks, over to the side pretending his entire chest isn’t bleeding from the gaping hole Zoe left. 

“You guys don’t get it. Zoe was meant to be an overpowered little monster, threading the fade to her will and taking down whole _armies_ if she was pressed,” Zoe says, shaking her head. “That’s why I said if she died that’s what she wanted. She was fully capable of surviving that fight with Corypheus, and forgive me for speaking plain. I know it’s still fresh.”

Sera jumps off the log beside Zoe and hisses whatever cusses she can think of to herself. She shouldn’t have asked. 

No one stops her as she stomps away from the camp, and they’re probably better off for it. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? Feelings? Have you ever yearned so much you felt your heart would burst?


	3. “let me rest, achilles, bury my ashes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you saw the first version of this chapter no you didnt

This Zoe wields a stave. 

It feels like such an arbitrary difference, a stupid thing to give more thought. 

Cassandra asks, regardless, as they walk and the brown haired herald uses it as a walking stick. 

Zoe blinks. 

“Because it’s got a knife on the end and I’m squishy?” She poses, voice half incredulous. “My fighting skills heavily rely on ranged or _super close_ combat. And I am not getting super close to people with sharp sticks and magic.”

It’s so… reasonable. 

A bird chirps, high and reedy in a tree nearby. Once, then twice. 

“That is… very responsible of you,” Cassandra says slowly, suspicious. What, was it willful ignorance then that her Inquisitor wouldn’t use a stave, then? 

It sounds so very in character it makes Cassandra’s heart fond and ache in equal measure. 

“I probably won’t be doing normal… magicky shit, with it, but yeah,” Zoe hums, turning back to face the front, stave landing with a _tap tap tap_ against the cobbled road they walk on. 

“Why do you suppose that? The not using it for its purpose?” Solas asks from where he takes the rear, voice contemplative. 

Zoe looks back, and there is a grin Cassandra has never seen on her face before. A half grin that’s a show of sharp teeth and made with mischief in mind. 

“ _Spite._ That’s all it is, now. Something’s still railing in me at the idea that I _have_ to do anything, especially how I _have_ to use magic.”

That might be the most important revelation into this Zoe’s inner motivations than any before. Spite and fighting against authority. Now Cassandra is certain that despite how she has clearly aged she is still a teenager. 

_Maker. They crowned a teenager their Inquisitor._

She forgot, sometimes, despite how naïve her Inquisitor could be, that being marked as their savior did not change what she was, at her core. 

Maybe she was always fated to become Herald. Maybe she was always fated to—

It does not matter. Not anymore. 

She will not fail again. 

( _Because she was separated from her, that final battle. She did not see her die. She did not have the chance to— to take the blow that forced her passing. Ended their tragedy. She will never forgive herself for it._ **_Never_ ** _._ )

Cassandra takes a shuddering breath, facing forward. Eyes on their surroundings, lest they be taken unawares by bandits. 

It did not matter that Cole and Sera scouted ahead. She would not risk danger coming to pass because she could not empty her mind of useless musings. 

The Hinterlands, they would reach them in a day’s time, if memory served. It had been long, since Cassandra trekked from Haven down to Ferelden proper. And after the first few times they had had horses to ease the burden of walking, and make the trip far faster and less miserable. 

Cassandra still remembers when they’d been caught in a snowstorm, just before leaving the Frostbacks, so long ago. 

Avery had shivered pitifully, muttering about the unreasonable cold and how hurricanes had the decency to hit you with a tree branch instead of freeze you to death. 

Varric had laughed, even as he shivered himself, all of them tucked together in an igloo hastily built by Solas, truly playing the part of a man of the wilds. 

Avery still feared Cassandra, then, happy to tuck herself between Varric and Solas instead of close to her. 

“ _What doesn’t a mage have to fear from a Seeker?_ ” Is uttered, quietly beside Cassandra. 

Cassandra, who has spent a significant amount of time near Cole, is almost proud that she does not flinch. 

“ _Cole_ ,” Cassandra says, dangerously, eyeing the twig shaped young man. 

“Ah. I keep forgetting. This body makes it hard to remember,” Cole mutters to himself, matching her walking pace easily, tapping his fingers together in jerky movements. “ _Don’t say what people don’t want said near others, Cole, sometimes it hurts more._ ”

 _There_ is his voice for Avery, kind and matter of fact. 

Cassandra sighs, reaching over and tapping her gauntleted fist against the top of the young man’s hat. 

“Endeavor to remember. You are forgiven, _for now_.”

The threat is empty, and from the eye contact Cole gives her for a moment, she is aware he knows it as well as she. 

_Tap tap tap_ , goes this Zoe’s stave turned walking stick, and so they continue. And so Cole disappears from her side leaving nothing but air. 

—

Thom Rainier is a coward. 

In this, _in this he will not be_. 

His lady lives. Lady Avery, kind Lady Avery walks and breathes and will be at the Crossroads and shame and unbearable relief echo in his mind, bouncing against its thick walls. 

So he finishes training those farmboys quickly, so he wears the armor of the Warden he pretended to be, and so he readies his axe and shield to meet her at the Crossroads. 

He will not falter this time. He will not fail her. 

( _“What you did was terrible,” Zoe says, face and voice blank as she stares at him through the bars of his cage. It is deserved. He deserves death. He deserves her ire, for this betrayal._

_He bows his head in shame. Though he does not deserve to shy away from her rightful disgust._

_A hand appears in his vision, cupping his cheek gently, as if he weren’t a grime covered monster wearing a man’s skin._

_He is made to look up, with her feather light touch. She kneels in front of him, arm reaching through the bars to— to give him_ **_comfort_ ** _._

 _“But your death will not bring them back. It will be of no use but to be a final act of cowardice. Living is harder,” She says quietly, words only for him. Green eyes staring into his very soul._ )

He. 

Whatever he is. Whatever brought him back to the start. _He will not squander it_. 

He would walk into the void for his Inquisitor, even if she is apparently changed now, if Varric’s letter is to be believed. 

Blackwall is glad to have her _at all_ . Damn all the complications, nothing is ever simple with their lives. They lived with an _ancient elvhen god_ for two years. He can handle _complicated_ at this point. 

So he steps into the Crossroads and makes camp for the days before her arrival. The people are desperate, the way he’d almost forgotten after they stabilized the Hinterlands. 

He never forgot. Not truly. Blackwall is an old war dog, hands made to heft a blade and forearm long since gained a permanent imprint from where his shield straps laid on his skin. It was always a matter of when it would come again. 

He helps nonetheless. 

He is not so much of a coward as he was before. Not since he took Blackwall as a title instead of a mask. He uses his hands to bring down game for the hungry, and his shield to block spellfire and templar blades both from the innocent. 

Blackwall’s bashing a Templar’s face in, protecting a young man barely old enough to grow his chin hairs, when he sees her. 

And suddenly, his world shudders back into place. Into what is right. 

Blackwall sends the boy running to safety, and cleaves his way through any in his path to his Inquisitor, cool focus taking his mind. Battle calm. 

A spell slides off his shield, off into the sky. Blackwall buries his axe into the throat of a mage stupid enough to get close. He blocks a Templar’s arrow, seeing the dent it lays into his shoddy sheild, and rushes forward, a flurry of heavy, quick blows cutting holes into the archer, eyes straying to ensure his Inquisitor is not being overwhelmed. 

Lady Avery stomps once, ice shooting forth to freeze a Templar who came too close to Varric, said Templar shattered by Cassandra’s shield. 

He dodges a ball of flame, and refocuses. 

End this skirmish. Quickly. 

A familiar blur of an odd hat and spinning daggers slits the throat of the mage nearest to Blackwall. 

Blackwall breathes. 

—

Varric hisses curses that would curdle milk and make Rivani blush. 

Blackwall kneels in front of the kid, looking like he’s swearing _fealty._ This is not the place or the time. 

“ _Stand up, Hero!_ ” Varric says, eyes pointedly not darting to the nearby scouts who are going to report their every move back to Red. 

Zoe looks like she’s going to die of embarrassment. Poor kid. 

“My Lady,” Blackwall says, and it’s a miracle this man survived ten years in the wild lying his ass off. 

Then again, he didn’t have to talk to people much. Maybe a few screws came loose between then and now. 

“Blackwall, great to meet you, let’s do this literally anywhere else,” Zoe says, dread pouring from her voice in waves, enough to make _Chuckles_ flinch behind them. 

( _Then again, anything she did made Solas flinch._ )

The man does so, nodding simply, looking as grief struck as the rest of them did at the first sight of her. Grey eyes taking in her face like he’s afraid he’ll never see it again, hand on his pommel saying he’ll die before it happens. 

( _Something in Varric registers how terrifying it is, for this girl to have so much control over them all, with just a twist of her lips and a quiet word. This is why he didn’t get attached. This is why he didn’t use names. This is why—_ )

Zoe surveys the damage around them, pale, jaw clenched, her thumb and index finger at her side rubbing together. A new tell he noted a week back. Her thinking tick. He’ll need to break her out of something so obvious before she hits Orlais. 

And then, suddenly, Varric remembers she had her first kills all over again, at the Crossroads. No tears, this time around. 

He knows that look on her face, though, or at least he thinks he does. That’s a “ _deal with it later_ ” face. 

“Someone needs to search the bodies, see what can be salvaged and used or sold,” Zoe murmurs, voice carrying. “Someone else check for the wounded and get them carried over to the healers. I’ll speak to Mother Giselle.”

Sera is moving already, jaw clenched as she goes to search the bodies. Cole is murmuring about hurts and slinking off, so Varric assumes he’s onto the wounded. 

So the rest of them follow Zoe to where Mother Giselle has revealed herself, murmuring to one of the wounded as an exhausted looking mage stands nearby. 

Varric knocks his shoulder into Hero’s arm, blanching. 

He has no right to grumble about dramatics, after the fucking mess he’d been that first week. He never claimed he wasn’t a hypocrite, though. 

Hero doesn’t spare Varric a glance, eyes only on the back of Zoe’s disheveled head. 

Varric can’t blame him. Even if this mess makes him more paranoid than Solas by the day. 

( _And anyone who knew the man, as much as anyone could know_ **_Solas_ ** _, knew that was an achievement._ )

The air smells like magefire and iron, cold against Varric’s skin. 

He doesn’t shiver. Wouldn’t matter if he did or didn’t anyways. 

—

Zoe doesn’t throw up.

She wants to, fuck, _fuck fuck fuck._ She wants to. She wants to be alone, she wants to sob, she wants to go home.

She stares blank faced at Mother Giselle, itching for a mask. Every bare face she sees is unnerving, every fucking time. 

“Hello, child,” Giselle starts, the curl of her eyes kind. She reminds Zoe of her grandma, she sort of hates that, in an unfair way. 

She is _not_ reopening the trauma of losing her culture again, ugh.

“Agent Zoe, actually,” Zoe corrects in what she hopes is a polite tone, nodding in greeting. “You wished to speak to me?” 

Something sad crosses the woman’s face, and it annoys her. She’s being unfair, she knows how she looks. She’s got a baby face, she just saw her first battle, she’s acting cold, she _gets it._ Frankly her frustration is unduly redirected at her. 

She’s still annoyed. And nauseous. And wants to cry. Fuck.

She is underqualified for this shit.

“Yes, the Chantry’s denouncement,” Giselle starts, her hands clasped in front of her as she begins to walk farther from the wounded. “And I know of those behind it.”

Zoe follows, looking back as the Inner Circle loiter behind them, and back forward. It still smells like blood, thick in this village.

“I will not lie to you, some of them are grandstanding, hoping to increase their chances of becoming the new Divine.”

They stop, overlooking those cleaning up the earlier carnage.

“Some, are simply terrified. So many good people, senselessly taken from us,” Giselle sighs, shaking her head.

“But you have a plan to sway some of them to our cause?” Zoe asks instead of saying some platitudes about how fucked that mountain was. Charred corpses, ruined ancient stones, red lyrium. 

Her jaw clenches, hands flexing, and she forces herself to not be so fucking obvious in front of the Chantry mother.

Giselle nods, firmly. “We must give them something else to believe in, in our Divine’s absence.”

Gross. Gross gross gross _gross--_

“Makes sense,” Zoe says, feeling nausea in her throat, a gross miasma that goes down to her lungs. “Belief is a powerful thing.”

Giselle looks like she’s seeing through her, and it’s terrifying.

“The most powerful. I do not know if you have been touched by fate, but I hope, and that is but another form of belief.”

She doesn’t want them to believe in her. She doesn’t want to be anyone’s pillar, or their show of divine power she doesn’t even believe in. She wants to go lay down in her bed with her soft pillows and pretend this doesn’t exist. 

It all feels so _wrong_ , like a game of pretend where she manipulates people’s faith into getting what she wants. She’s a fraud, she knows she’s nothing but a fluke of Solas’s idiocy, at least in the context of her hand _proving_ some sort of divinity, the hand of a Maker she’d spit in teh face of if she thought he existed. 

“The people will listen to your rallying call as they will listen to no other.” Giselle is still talking. Focus, _focus,_ Zoe. “You could build the Inquisition into a force that will _deliver us,_ or destroy us.”

Oh she’s gonna have such a panic attack after this.

“I will go to Haven and tell Sister Leliana the names of those more...amenable, to a gathering. It is not much, but I will do whatever I can.”

Giselle parts with a small nod, a glance at her uncovered mark that feels more significant than Zoe is willing to analyze, and Zoe stands, still as a statue, eyes turning from her back to stare out into the space in front of her.

Oh her depression is _so_ gonna have a rerun while she does this hero shit, at least she knows she won’t fucking kill herself, she wants to live long enough to become a hermit somewhere and never deal with any of this shit again.

There is so much in life for her to enjoy, and here she is. Stuck as a phoney messiah. 

“Are you alright?” There’s Cassandra.

Zoe closes her eyes, takes one, deep, long breath, and exhales a sigh.

“No. I feel so sick I want to tear my chest out, but we’ve got things to do.”

She opens her eyes and looks to the concerned adults who apparently are incapable of running themselves, and starts walking.

“Come on, we need to talk to some people,” Zoe says, and it’s always more talking. She hasn’t been alone since she was in a fucking magic induced coma, and before that since she was at home.

Oh nevermind a panic attack she’s on course for a breakdown.

\--

_Like rain on the roof, pressure in my chest, it aches it aches it aches._

_An axe would go crunch if it-_

Cole lays a hand on her shoulder, something foriegn rolling in his gut.

_Fear._

He is afraid.

“You said you would tell,” He says, low, careful, the words are like water, a flow tumbling from his mouth. Maybe more like rocks, pebbles, stones are heavy.

She looks back at the others, watching their moves, _are they paying attention? May I fall apart, now? Can I sleep?_

He pulls her into a hug, long arms ungainly, folding in comfort. She just wanted a hug.

She holds her breath, she’s fighting tears, Zoe, light, fire, hurt and kind. _It means light, in my language- It means purity- I was named after a snowboarding character with a bad potty mouth and sick moves._

She wraps her arms around him carefully, testing, scared, _is it okay? Can I be okay? I always hug for too long, people as if I’m alright._

“It’s alright,” Cole says firmly, head bowed, chin tucked over her head. His hat blocks his vision. “You can hug me for as long as you want.”

She shudders into his chest, hands turning to fists in his shirt, arms tightening around him like a vice.

“ _I grow weary, achilles, bury my ashes, let me rest._ No. You will not do what she did,” Cole murmurs, rubbing her back. 

“No,” She says into his shirt, now damp. “I’m just tired.”

“It’s okay,” Cole says, knowing dripping into his self like water from a faucet. “You can rest now, then, and then you will get back up.”

She nods, once, against his chest, jerky and pained. He can feel her tearing at the seams, expectations like heavy things on her shoulders. _Atlas and the world, held by his agonized strength, a girl and boy taking it, pain and care and love white streaking through hair-_

No. No, wrong pains, far and gone.

“Is she alright, kid?” Varric asks, swirling hurts like _my kid my kid lost and gone and back please let her be okay this time please let me have something for once, andraste-_

They taste like hurt and concern and exhaustion. He’s old for so young, his knees started aching by the end last time, closer to new now.

His hurts will make hers worse. The threads are frayed, trying to attach to hers when they’re meant for someone gone. She doesn’t want them, not really, but she’s kind. Compassion. It sings with him like magic, like lyrium.

“She needs to rest, everything is too much.”

Zoe digs her face into his chest harder, hiding. She doesn’t want to be in charge, good at pretending, but never in want of power or people relying. _Not a hero, heroes die and bleed and give everything, I will not. I want to live, I never want to die like that, not like her-_

_“Suicide is cowardice,” She was scared, scared to lose again, not after both brothers and mother. Mom didn’t mean for it to hurt, for it to sting, she just wanted me to live. I just wanted her to do something. I just wanted her to help._

Cole’s arms tighten, familiar hurts older but reopened. 

“...We will set up camp,” Solas murmurs, quiet, knowing, yearning, _sad._ The others walk a distance away, far enough for a shout, but unseen, unheard, and they as well.

“I’m so scared,” Zoe says, voice cracking. _I hate when it cracks, like nothing I say matters, clouded by emotion and_ **_weakness_ **.

“You are not weak,” Cole corrects, careful, watching, settling them on the ground as she clutches him. “And this _is_ all very scary.”

“I wanna go home,” She says, quiet, shuddering in the pain of it all. _Lost world lost culture lost people lost family lost universe lost stars the sky burns and all I had wanted was to stare up at my own._

He knows, then, what she is asking. 

_Can I?_

_Is it even possible?_

“I don’t know.”

They sit for a long time, Cole’s shirt wet with salt and loss and her eyes glowing green against red.

\--

It’s all shit, innit?

Sera polishes her spare daggers with a scowl, annoyed and afraid and more annoyed. They’ve got Beardy back, which is nice, but Herald Not Really Avery But Sort Of is having a shit time and is off with Weirdy a little ways off, crying or some shit. 

She feels _shit_. 

Sera doesn’t know her, she does, or thinks she does sometimes, when she talks or looks about, but she isn’t her. She’s not Little Bit with her quiet and her earnest helping or whatever. She’s older, and tireder, and none of Avery’s naivety. 

And that hurts. It hurts to look at her and almost have her— her _friend_ back, and have it broken, again and again. She isn’t— she misses her. 

She misses Zoe. _Her_ , Zoe, with the face full blush and the quiet ease and her soft hands. And she’s not coming back. 

She looks over at Blackwall and listens in on Solas, Varrica and Cassandra’s whispered attempted explanation. 

“She’s not ours, then? We were just her book?” 

It stings. 

Varric grimaces, new wrinkles that are really old ones already forming on his two years younger face. “Sort of. She knows this is all real, but she knows...everything. Like an author would.”

Blackwall nods, slowly, trying for understanding. He’s always been good at that. “But she’s the same still? Just older? I can see it in her face, she’s not fresh faced fifteen.”

“She’s seventeen,” Solas says, now, quiet. “It is my understanding it’s been two years for her since she wrote her...book. I believe when...Zoe passed, something changed, and we were all...rerouted. Including her.”

“What does it fucking matter?” Sera asks before she can stop herself. “This talking about it, Zoe is _dead_ , and we’ve got a half assed replacement. That’s that.”

Varric closes his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose, Solas’s face blank. She almost feels bad. Almost. 

It’s Cassandra who snaps. 

“Yes, she is,” She says, rearing up, standing from where she had been sitting and looming over Sera with all the might she’d imagine in a Right Hand of the Divine. “She is dead, Sera. Perhaps you should stop blaming our new herald for it.”

Sera’s hands tighten around her daggers, teeth baring in a sneer. “ _You shut it_ , you don’t know a fucking thing about who I blame for anything, fancy britches.”

“She is of the opinion you hate her,” Solas says, voice detached, passive. “She weathers it like it is her due. As if she is to blame.”

Sera stands, knocking Cassandra back a ways with her chest and encroaching in the fucking _elfiest elf alive_ who thinks he has room to say _shit._ She waves her dagger in his face with narrowed eyes. 

“You know _exactly_ who I blame for this, wolf fucker, you _know it_ , shut your shit mouth. I’m not her buddy buddy, and I’m not falling over myself to be at her side like _you_ britches, sure. I don’t _know her._ And you can’t make me do a thing,” Sera hisses, punctuating her words with every wave of her knife, watching the man’s face never shake, never move. Like the fucking ancient stone he’s as old as. 

This is his fault. She’s dead because of his evil doing _whatever_ , not because— because she chose to do whatever, she wouldn’t have _had_ to think it was her only choice if he hadn’t—

“ _Sera_ ,” Blackwall says firmly, a hand grasping her hand holding the dagger that was getting dangerously closer and closer to Solas’s eyes. 

“ **_What?_ **” 

“Sit _down_ , girl, breathe,” He orders, as if he can, fake Warden and all. 

She sits in her seat anyways. Because she _wants_ to. 

They sit in silence, thicker than any noble’s cake. 

“You are right.”

Sera’s head jerks to Solas, his head bowed, face unseen. 

“I am to blame. You are right to be angry.”

“ _Chuckles—_ ,” Varric starts, something pained in his face. 

“ _Do not,_ ” Solas says sharply. 

Quiet. Sera bounces her leg. 

“If we begin placing blame on shoulders, we will fall apart,” Cassandra says, finally. 

“And why not?” Sera asks, something that hurts stuck in her throat. “Why not leave? We don’t owe anyone anything. We fixed this once.”

“Because she can’t do this alone, Sera.” Varric’s words are quiet, exhausted, and he looks up from his bowed position to look at her. “Because she can’t do this alone, and because there won’t be any retirement if we don’t do this again.”

Sera wants to run, across the sea to somewhere she’s never seen and they don’t know her face. go back to before, never staying anywhere long and never caring. 

But she can’t. She knows it. She can’t leave, she watched the closest thing she had to family die for this Inquisition, she’ll see it through. Just one more time. For Zoe, _her_ Zoe. Sweet and kind and stupid in the best ways. 

Sera stabs her daggers into the wood of the stump she’s sitting on. “ _Fine._ Fine.”

Fine. She’ll stay. But she’s still pissed. She’s always pissed, these days. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> school is kicking my ass rn and this is helping me cope with *those* feelings. i think i really hit the theme of grief today real good. please tell me how you feel!


End file.
